Nienke Blom is a PhD student at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) working on seismic imaging techniques. Using waveform inversion, she works on developing methods to image density directly and independently. This is interesting because density contrasts determine the forcing of mantle convection and plate tectonics. Additionally, independently imaging density along with seismic velocities can help to differentiate between thermal and compositional heterogeneity within the Earth. After showing that density can in principle be recovered in synthetic examples, Nienke now works on applying her methods to the Eastern Mediterranean region.
The poster presented at EGU 2017 explores one of the ways in which we can explore the seismic signal to maximise sensitivity to density. This is done by comparing different parts of the seismic signal and finding the linear combination of measurements that maximises sensitivity to density while minimising sensitivity to the other parameters.
Collaborating with Andreas Fichtner and others at ETH Zürich, she travels to Zurich a lot. In 2018, she will start as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge.

About EGU

EGU, the European Geosciences Union, is Europe’s premier geosciences union, dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the Earth, planetary, and space sciences for the benefit of humanity, worldwide. It was established in September 2002 as a merger of the European Geophysical Society (EGS) and the European Union of Geosciences (EUG), and has headquarters in Munich, Germany.